THE PERFORMANCE OF Western Digital's first Raptor Serial ATA hard drive was outstanding, but the drive's limited 37GB capacity stood out like a sore thumb. Since the original WD360GD was targeted at enterprise applications where capacity is sometimes secondary to performance, the drive's relatively small size was forgivable, but still impractical, especially for enthusiasts.

To give its 10K-RPM Serial ATA drives more widespread appeal, Western Digital upped the Raptor's capacity to 74GB for the WD740GD model, but didn't stop there. The new Raptor's internals have also been tweaked to give the drive faster seek times and transfer rates, lower noise levels, and support for command queuing. How does this latest Raptor fare against its Serial ATA and SCSI-based competition? Let's find out.